Free-Wrench, no. 1 Read Online Free Page B

forgotten feature
of the shore that just so happened to be perfect for mooring an
airship near enough to the surface to avoid drawing too much
attention.
    The fog turned anything more than a hundred
yards out into a shadowy gray form, so it wasn’t until they were
nearly upon Moor Spires that they saw the airship emerge from the
haze. It was lashed to the three tallest stones, and Nita’s eyes
opened wide at each new detail as it was revealed. Until now, an
airship had only ever been a dot in the sky drifting slowly along
as it gave her homeland a wide berth. Seeing one up close
fascinated her, though even to her untrained eye it was clear that
this ship was not what one might call a fine specimen. A bulging,
barely intact gas sack comprised the bulk of the vehicle. It had at
one point been red, but time and misuse had turned it into a quilt
of differently colored patches and grafts. The sack was enormous,
perhaps seventy-five feet long and bulging to thirty feet in
diameter at its thickest. It was rounded at the front and pointed
at the back where a trio of fins stuck off the top and sides,
giving it a stretched-out teardrop shape. The thickest part of the
sack was wrapped in a wide metal lattice, which served as the
mounting point for five barrel-sized nacelles, evenly spaced. Each
nacelle was filled with a blossom of short overlapping blades and
had a smooth metal cowling.
    The hull of the ship dangled below the sack,
stretching to forty feet in length and trailing back from the front
end of the sack, following a slightly narrower profile. Like the
sack, it had signs of obvious patching, strips of blond, unstained
wood standing out against the rich brown of the original planks.
The overall structure of the ship put one in mind of a yacht-sized
pirate ship that had been hauled out of the sea. It had a flat deck
on top, separated into a main deck and an elevated tier toward the
front to better follow the lower curve of the sack. Below the
railing at the edge of the deck was a row of glass and brass
portholes running the length of the ship, and below those were a
second and third row. Jutting to the left and right from the front
of the ship was a pair of cannon clusters, three each, with a
single cluster sticking out of the back. Where it departed from the
pirate ship motif was the piping, which jutted out of and into the
hull with little rhyme or reason, and here and there escaping steam
hissed and spat. Black smoke huffed out the back of the ship from
three soot-covered metal chimneys. Thick black rubber hoses ran up
a wooden runner from the deck to the central band of the sack,
leading one by one to the nacelles.
    Directly below the ship, a small dinghy hung
attached to it by a pair of slackened chains. In the dinghy was a
mound of sacks and chests and a young man, who, in the process of
relieving himself off the opposite side, had his back to the
approaching skiff. The man whistled to himself and, based on the
trajectory, was attempting to amuse himself by creating as high an
arc as possible. Linus gave the steam whistle a quick pull,
startling the young man into what was nearly a messy conclusion to
his little interlude.
    “Well, that wasn’t a very neighborly thing to
do to a fella!” called out the young man once he’d managed to
finish up and make himself decent again.
    “Just wanted to give you a little warning.
There’s a lady on board today,” Linus said.
    “Is there? Well, ain’t my face red! How do
you do, ma’am! I hope you don’t mind if I wait until you all are a
mite closer before I introduce myself proper, just so’s I don’t
have to yell quite so much.”
    There was an odd twang to the man’s voice,
but an earnest quality to his words. He also had a peculiar manner
of dressing, at least from Nita’s point of view. In Caldera, unless
one’s occupation dictated otherwise, a certain formality applied to
even the most basic outfits. Clothes were tailored, carefully
selected, and properly